


From the Water

by gracelesso



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Do You Need a Hug?, Domestic Avengers, Domestic Fluff, Everyone Needs A Hug, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, I need a hug, Natasha Romanov Needs a Hug, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Sam Wilson Needs a Hug, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-29
Updated: 2018-06-23
Packaged: 2019-05-15 14:39:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14792396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gracelesso/pseuds/gracelesso
Summary: Heads.“Bucky,” says Steve. “What happened to Bucky?”---Tails.Who is the man on the ground?Why are you in a tree?Is the man on the ground alright?“Who is the man on the ground?”SHIT.You realise you’ve asked the question aloud as the red woman’s eyebrows come down and her mouth snaps shut, opens again, closes.





	1. The Riverbank - Heads

**Author's Note:**

> this was gonna be a series of one-shots, but it might be a story. we'll see. still finding my feet with who i want these characters to be, and how to keep them who they are.

Steve slips in and out of consciousness. 

Good God but his body hurts. 

\---

He blinks. The light stabs behind his eyes and he retches.

With his eyes shut, the light is bright and scarlet.

His head has never weighed more, and every shallow breath slices straight through him. 

He needs to cough, but his entire torso is agony. He feels he’s choking, and little trickles of fluid run down his cheeks. He tastes dirt, and blood. 

Something is deeply wrong in his abdomen. His fingers and toes are numb with cold, but his stomach is warm. 

Everything goes dark.

\---

The hot red light is back behind his eyes. The pain is worse. He can’t twitch a finger.

The darkness comes back.

\---

There are voices now, voices above his head.

The speakers are strangers, and that hurts too.

\---

He’s under blankets, his neck braced and something cold in his forearm.

He hears a voice again, familiar this time. It’s asking him a question, but he can’t make out the words.

His tongue moves in his mouth, bloody and swollen. He chokes on it.

Cool hands touch his face, fitting a straw between his teeth.

He sips weakly, but the pain of swallowing is too much. 

Darkness again.

\---

The next time Steve wakes, the hot light is gone. 

He’s in a soft bed, and a dark room. His body feels distant, alien.

He blinks, and sees a shadow sitting in the corner of the room.

His heartbeat picks up, painful in his battered chest.

The shadow moves into the light, and he sees Sam wince at his obvious disappointment.

“Bucky,” says Steve. “What happened to Bucky?”


	2. The Riverbank - Tails

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> now from the other side...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> haven't a clue why this is happening in second person - i tried first, third, various weird artificial-sounding options - somehow this stuck.

Your body is shivering. You can hear the rapid chinking of the Arm against the knife in your belt. You shift a little, feeling the cold in the tense set of your jaw as you wrap the Fingers around a branch for stability. You’re in a crouch that ought to be easy to jump out of, if you’re threatened, but your muscles are locked.

You don’t know why you’re there.

There are people clustered not 20ft away, dressed in black tac vests and neon bibs. They’re focused on the prone man who’s weakly coughing up blood-tinged river water. They seem nervous, unsure how to proceed. Your icy fingers drum silently on your knee as they dither.

Three stand to the side of the group - the winged man (now wingless), the familiar redhead, and another woman, one with dark hair and sharp military posture. They seem at once more sincerely concerned and more decisive than the ditherers. 

The military woman breaks away and starts snapping instructions to the paramedics, who begin moving the man with the star on his chest toward the ambulance. You can hear them talking.

“Christ, he’s heavy,” says one. “I’m sweating like a pig in this heat.”

_Heat?_ you think, puzzled. You’re freezing. The cold is in your joints, metal and organic alike. You realise you’re sweating as well. You wonder if you’re sick. You’ve been out of the tank for some time now. 

_Not the tank._

Your metal hand grips tight on the branch and it snaps. Loudly. 

_Shit,_ you think. The red-haired woman has turned, staring right at the spot where you’re hidden. You know you’re hidden. You should move. You have to leave, escape, hide, recuperate, return, report, reset. 

Instead, you freeze as the woman stalks toward you, hunting.

“Natasha, where are you going?” says the winged man. 

She ignores him, intent on your hiding place. You know you should hide, but somehow this drags you in two opposing directions.

_Shit shit SHIT,_ you think again. 

You need to go back to the tank. You need to stay out of the tank. 

_SHIT._

You are not something that freezes. Nothing you know dictates how to tackle this scenario. Indecision is entirely outside your experience. The woman is getting closer and you’re rapidly running out of time to avoid conflict and you’re going to have to face her and there’s a knife in your hand and your body is preparing to fight without your thought because if you can’t run then at least you can still do this and ---

She’s below your perch, looking straight up at you. You have elevation as an advantage, all you need to do is drop down onto her but you don’t, and you don’t know why, and she opens her mouth to speak and you think now, now, jump now and your body does nothing.

She pauses before speaking and stands unafraid, staring straight into your eyes, and you’re confused. This, too, is outside your experience. People fear you. They fight you, or they flee from you. People do not stare at you while standing in vulnerable positions. 

_Why is that?_ says the new voice in the back of your head, but you don’t have an answer for it. 

Your body is still frozen, unresponsive and distant from you.

_Why do you know this woman? Why are you not fighting her? Why do you want to fight her?_ The voice is there again, full of questions. _Who is she?_ You are not curious, normally. _Who is the man on the ground?_ You do not ask questions. _Why are you in a tree?_ You accept information as relevant, and follow your orders. _Why do you have so many weapons?_

____

____

_Who is the man on the ground?_

_Why are you in a tree?_

_Is the man on the ground alright?_

“Who is the man on the ground?”

_SHIT._ You realise you’ve asked the question aloud as the red woman’s eyebrows come down and her mouth snaps shut, opens again, closes. 

She reaches her hands out at waist height, palms upward, to show she’s unarmed. You don’t believe her for a second, but you appreciate the gesture.

She hasn’t answered your question, you realise. You repeat it. She replies with a question of her own, one that stumps you utterly.

“Who are you?” she says, her voice low and calm. She seems not to be afraid of you, even as you hang over her head, a knife in your right hand and gears whirring to your left.

_Who are you?_ echoes the new voice inside your head. Curious again. The question feels wrong, somehow. You’re not quite sure that you’re a “who”. 

You’re staring at the woman on the ground. You don’t answer her question. You don’t know how to.

She tries again.

“Sergeant Barnes?”

Something lying beneath the voice twitches.

“James?”

It twitches again, but with less strength.

“Bucky?”

It jerks so hard you react physically, breath hissing between your teeth as the cracked branch in the Hand tears clean off and you lose your balance for a second.

The woman’s face shows little surprise as she sidesteps the falling branch, but she flinches - just a fraction - when you spit a question at her.

“Who the hell is Bucky?”

At her response something embedded deep within you reads weakness and takes the chance. You leap down from the tree, landing in front of her with remarkably little noise. The knife is up, but loosely held, plainly not ready to strike. Her composure slams back into place quickly and you see her shift her weight minutely.

_She’s a weapon too._

For some reason this makes you relax, even as you continue to point a knife toward her and she remains ready to strike. You heard the winged man use her name, you remember.

“Natasha?” It’s a question, though you’re not sure what it is that you’re asking or how you expect her to respond.

“Are you Bucky Barnes?” she asks. The thing behind the voice starts trembling and the pain of it makes your head ache and your vision blur and your heartbeat is racing now and the voice is repeating the question over and over _Are you Bucky Barnes? Are you Bucky Barnes? Are you Bucky Barnes? Are you? Are you? Bucky? Buck?_

Something cracks inside you. 

The man with the star on his chest, you see him lying on the ground, in the river, falling through the air away from you, spitting blood as you hit him again and again, staring at you in shock from beside a flipped car, reaching out as you fall sickeningly far, looming over you unexpectedly in a dark room, and ---

_“WHO IS THE MAN ON THE GROUND?”_

The voice rips out of you, uncontrolled and unfamiliar, and the weapon-woman is definitely startled this time. You hear people approaching, the shouting voice of the winged man and at least two others, and suddenly your body is awake again, the weight of the day’s repeated shocks finally overcome by your need to get away, get clear, work out what you are and where to go.

You see in the Natasha-weapon’s eyes that she knows you’re about to run, but she won’t stop you. The voice pushes one more word, quieter this time, through your lips.

_“Please,”_ it says. 

The others are coming nearer, and the woman-Natasha has seconds to decide whether to restrain you or let you go. You’re sure it’ll be the latter and are readying the Arm to fight when she speaks.

“He’s your friend,” she says, voice and face softer than before. “Now go.”

You run.


	3. Recovery - Heads

It’s bright day when Steve wakes up next. 

He remembers asking a question.

He doesn't know if he received an answer.

There are voices in the room, low and urgent.

The speakers think he’s asleep, but still don’t want him to hear.

The voices are familiar. That hurts again.

Why?

They’re the wrong voices.

He drifts in the sadness of that for a moment.

He hears a name.

That name.

“And when I asked him if he was Bucky Barnes he just about lost it, Sam. He kept asking me who the man on the ground was.”

Steve fights the urge to snap upright and grill them as Sam snorts.

“You’re not going to say anything?” says Natasha.

A pause. Then Sam’s voice responds.

“Man, I don’t know what you want me to say. You let the Winter Soldier go.”

Steve feels his pulse spike, and hears Natasha curse as she sees it on the monitor he’s strapped to.

He knows he has to wake up now.

He blinks, and the light disagrees with him, so he groans and shuts his eyes again.

“Hey Nat, Sam,” he says. It hurts his throat, and his voice splits hoarsely.

“How do you feel?” asks Sam, ever considerate behind the snark.

“Dreadful, but considering…” He trails off.

Natasha’s observant as always, knows he’s not talking about the extensive injuries to his preternaturally strong body.

“We don’t know where Barnes is, Steve.” Businesslike, not coddling, even as the words rob him of the ability to breathe. 

He opens his eyes to get a fix on her expression and try to understand what he’s telling her. 

The light hurts less now, or maybe it’s that his focus is elsewhere. 

Bucky has always mattered more than his pain.

“He was lurking in a tree, watching the team handling you on the riverbank. I went after him, spoke to him. He was confused. Didn’t know who you were, didn’t know the name Bucky Barnes.”

Steve feels the air leave his lungs, and he sags against the slanted bed.

“There was something else there, though. He wasn’t the machine that came after us on the highway. He seemed - more human.”

Something trembles in Steve’s chest, something he doesn’t want to examine too closely in case he finds that it’s hope. 

He looks at Nat, who has stopped, but not finished. 

He wants to encourage her to go on, but her expression suggests more vulnerability than he’s ever seen from her outside the moment she’d shown him the scar above her hip.

It’s Sam who breaks the silence, a hint of the counsellor in his voice.

“Just tell us what you want to, Natasha. Not under any pressure here.”

She takes a steadying breath, nods, and drops her shoulders a little before continuing.

“Neither of you knew me when I came in. I didn’t know how to be, or who to be even. It took me a long while before I was anything close to a person, and longer still before I was me. And from what I know of the Winter Soldier, he’s been in this life for far longer than I was.”

Steve feels her eyes on him, and looks directly into them for the first time since waking. 

There’s a shadow and a pain there that he’s glimpsed before, but it’s closer to the surface than he’s ever seen it.

“I don’t know what’s left of your friend, and I don’t know if he’ll get it back,” says Natasha, “ but I don’t think he’s a threat. Really.”


End file.
